Are you
building or carrying a "fantasy rifle?" Would
your friends tell you if you were?

A brief look
at defining a term used in several different ways and a bit
of personal opinion on one kind of increasingly common fantasy rifle.

To my knowledge it was Alan
Gutchess who first introduced the term "fantasy rifle,"
in about 1988 while he was working as an apprentice in
the Colonial Williamsburg Gunsmith Shop, to describe a
modern made longrifle that was so different from any
known originals that it was in fact the builder’s
“fantasy.” Alan actually adapted the term from a
catalog from Atlanta Cutlery that had a section named Fantasy Knives
for blades carried in movies like Konan the Barbarian,
etc. At the time he, and soon all of us in the shop,
were using the term mostly to refer to what builders and
parts/kit dealers were calling “transitional rifles”—the
elusive missing link between the Jaeger and the
longrifle. The term caught on quickly and several other
folks have claimed authorship.

Over the last two decades the term
fantasy rifle has expanded to have several different
meanings. This article offers some thoughts on those
additional meanings:

I. One type that discussed a
good bit recently on Internet message boards, especially
those about reenacting and trekking, would be a Pre-Revolutionary
style Lancaster or
Christian Spring rifle with iron mounts filed up and
engraved like the many brass examples. The early use of
iron mounts in those regions is simply not documentable
at this time but that has not stopped dealers from
offering them or builders from using them. Undoubtedly
they have a lot of appeal but none are known to survive
and none show up in writings of the period.

II. Another type of fantasy
rifle would be the grand presentation-grade rifles where
a longrifle form is decorated with the amount, style and
quality of art found on a fine European arm. Several of
these were included in the Three Centuries of
Tradition show at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
in 2003 and are in the catalog of that exhibit. The
masterful work of the top builders like John Bivins, Jud Brennan, and
Wallace Gusler come to mind. (These men also make
extremely fine examples of rifles made “in a workman
like manner” that could be carried back in time to
colonial America and fit right in.) When it was featured
on the cover of Muzzle Blasts magazine, Wallace
described his elaborately wire inlayed fantasy rifle as
“male jewelry.” He saw no need to drill a touch hole
because he knew it would never be fired by the customer
he made it for.

III. A third kind of fantasy
rifle is one where the components of the rifle are
jarringly out of time. The most common example of this
an 18th-century style rifle with a parallel
sided barrel or German silver mounts or inlays. Less
obvious out of time details are found when Federal
Period motifs are used on a rifle purported to be from
the third quarter of the 18th century.

IV. I also believe that a
Revolutionary War style or even Golden Age rifle with
the fit and finish of an 1860 English sporting rifle or
a 1910 Purdy shotgun is yet another kind of fantasy
rifle. I confess that I have attempted, with varying
degrees of success, to build this kind of fantasy
rifle. Many of you readers have as well.

Some builders will
say that their customers expect this level of
workmanship, others do it because of the desire to show
that they can to work as good or better than the best
from the past or the best of their peers. Ron Ehlert
paraphrased a popular country music song by Toby Keith
when he proposed printing a tee shirt for the NMLRA
Gunsmithing Seminar with, “Gunbuilding, as good as it
ever was!”

It is sometimes difficult to know
where to stop; when to let good enough alone and move
on. One area where this has attracted attention in
recent years is in the relief carving—especially the
“backgrounding” (finishing of the background). Some
gunsmiths have been able to educate their customers and
find acceptance for work that is much more period
correct than what was being sold thirty years ago.
Others have, in my opinion, let the pendulum swing too
far and have, in the tradition of blacksmith who
deliberately leave in hammer marks, turned out carving
that is courser than that found on even the least
refined period work.

Realizing that the level of fit
and finish that is appropriate on a fine golden age
rifle should be much higher that what you would find on
an “average” Rev War period rifle, I try not to overwork
any part of the rifle, inside or out.

I just
don’t see the need or documentation for polishing the
file marks out of the
bottom three flats of the barrel, inletting a lock so
the slots in the sear and bridle screws show in the
bottom of the inlet (a detail faked on some high grade
19th-century English work by striking a slotted polished
punch in the bottom of the inlet), or putting stain and/or
finish in a patchbox cavity!

Some who have heard me state these
opinions, or read this web page, have interpreted them
to mean that I am encouraging "sloppy work." That is not
my belief or intent. In the 18th century there was an
appreciation of a product made in a "workman like
manner." Perhaps this is most evident in furniture
making where the various surfaces were finished as
needed or expected and no more. A grand table from the
period will be carefully scraped and varnished to a near
mirror surface on the top but left with plane marks and
unfinished on the bottom. The relief carving at eye
level on a highboy will be better detailed and finished
than that at the top or along the skirt.

Rifles were the same way on a
smaller scale. Barrel channels were rarely cut to match
the flats of the barrel except at the very breech and
muzzle ends--the rest was simply planed round. Drill bit
and chisel marks were accepted, and "normal," in a
patchbox cavity. Lock plates fit snuggly around the
edges but the inletting of the internals was usually
very hastily done with almost no contact between wood
and metal.

Bottom line is I don’t agree with
those who advise a new builder to make rifles
where everything as "perfect" as possible. Make the work
as authentic as possible instead. It is actually
somewhat harder to do authentic work because it requires
a broad understanding of what the "workman like"
standards were for rifles of different periods, regions,
and even individual makers.